United Artists Theatre
1520 1st Avenue,
Seattle,
WA
98101
1520 1st Avenue,
Seattle,
WA
98101
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Additional Info
Architects: Henderson Ryan
Styles: Beaux-Arts
Previous Names: Liberty Theatre, United Artists Theatre, Coliseum Theatre
Nearby Theaters
The Liberty Theatre opened in October 1914 and at some point was renamed United Artists Theatre. It was renamed Liberty Theatre in August 1927. Later known as the Coliseum Theatre, it was last known as the United Artists Theatre. The theatre lasted until 1955. It has since been razed.
Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 11 comments)
The Liberty Theatre seated 1600 people.
The Liberty Theatre was built in 1914 by C.S. Jensen and John G. von Herberg; it had a capacity of 1,700.
Here is a blog dated 2/17/08 with some then and now photos:
http://tinyurl.com/2cp27n
The Liberty Theatre was designed by architect Henderson Ryan, with engineer Henry W. Bittman. Scans of plans, drawings, and cross sections of the Liberty can be seen at the University of Washington Library’s Digital Collections. Use the search term Liberty Theatre.
The size and elaborate decoration of the Liberty, with the fact that it was designed specifically for the exhibition of movies, having neither a fly loft nor an orchestra pit, made it one of the very first theaters that could truly be called a movie palace.
Architect Henderson Ryan also designed the Neptune Theatre in Seattle and the Whiteside Theatre in Corvallis, Oregon.
Does anyone know if the Savoy Theater was on this site before the Liberty was built? I have an old pin back button that states the Savoy Theater was at 1ST and PIKE and makes a negative comment about the Patents Trust. The Savoy Hotel was at 2nd and Pike.
Thanks.
rick
Engineer Henry Bittman, who collaborated with Henderson Ryan on the Liberty Theatre project in 1914, was licensed as an architect in 1923 and went on to design at least three Seattle theatres himself; The Embassy Theatre of 1926, the Music Box Theatre of 1928, and the Town Theatre (aka Roosevelt) of 1933. The Embassy is the only one of these three still standing.
Should be AKA United Artists
Grand opening ads from October 27th, 1914, January 14th, 1927 as United Artists and from January 2nd, 1930 as Liberty posted in the photo section.
The Liberty also had one of the early Wurlitzer organs – built in their first year of pipe organ production. It was a 3 manual, 20 rank instrument – including a 4 rank echo division. The organ was only the 42nd instrument Wurlitzer built (out of some 2200 total). The cost was a whopping $16,500.
Liberty was known as United Artist Theatre (from some point) until August 1927. It switched back to Liberty then, and the Coliseum became known as United Artist Theatre.
The mighty Wurlitzer after being removed in 1955 and going to PLU Gymnasium and again in 1973 moved to Spokane First Church of the Nazarene where is today.